On Voting Machines, Markets - Part 2

Continuing this week's little series on revisiting various of my prior predictions about the world, today I'm looking back at this post I made in December 2005 (2005-12-22, to be precise) about the relative valuations of two publicly-traded companies: Google (ticker symbol = GOOG) and Berkshire Hathaway (ticker symbol = BRKA).



Back then, the stock market placed comparable values on Google and Berkshire Hathaway ($127 billion to $136 billion, respectively). Believing this circumstance to be highly improper, I wagered $10, agreeing to take all comers, that in 2012, Berkshire would be valued at least twice as high as Google.

Happily nobody took the bet. Today GOOG is still trading for less than BRKA, but both stocks have taken a real pounding. Right now BRKA has a market cap of around $113 billion (having lost 50% in the past six to eight months), and GOOG has a market cap of around $98 billion (having lost over 50% since it's absolute peak about in November 2007).

I hereby retract my offered wager. I may end up still being right, but I think now that seven years (from 2005 to 2012) was not a long enough period of time. I should've picked twenty or thirty years.



I think Berkshire's troubles would be over if only they required all their Dairy Queens to serve chocolate soft-serve. There's nothing better than a Butterfinger Blizzard with chocolate ice cream.